Abstract
The work of a physician is based on two pillars: scienti c knowledge and technical expertise being one of them, the humanities, ethics and philosophy the other. The former is taught at medical school, the la er is often neglected. Of fundamental importance are the classical phil- osophical questions about what is life and what is human being. Those cannot be answered by a natural scienti c approach alone. For this reason and in view of the preponderance of tech- nology in the daily routine in clinics, many medical students and physicians would like to be o ered an optional subject which focuses on those philosophical problems: a training in anthro- pology and philosophy, called Philosophicum. To meet this demand, the University Hospital of Würzburg has been o ering a Philosophicum ever since 2010 (www.philosophicum.ukw.de).
